Conspiracy theory researcher and debunker

Day: August 9, 2018

When I blogged for Skeptoid, I would often find a piece of conspiracy theory or psuedoscience and refute it point by point. One of my favorites was this piece from October 2013, where I tackled a 29-point listicle alleging that the west coast was being “fried” by radiation from the Fukushima meltdown.

It was and is not, and I was able to refute each of the bad faith claims made by the original piece. It’s exhausting to do, but useful in that it meets head on a favorite tactic of conspiracy theorists: the Gish Gallop. This is throwing out half-baked claim after half-baked claim in an endless succession and counting on the skeptic to eventually get tired of debunking them all and quit.

I don’t write much of these anymore, but wanted to come back to the format to answer a piece challenging the validity of anyone who thinks online conspiracy avatar QAnon is fake.